WarSclerotic

US in quiet talks with Hizballah as Syrian rebels lose Qalamoun strongholds in crushing defeat.

Funeral in Beirut of Hizballah officer Ali Bazzi killed in Syria

The conquest Sunday, Dec. 8, of Nabuk in the Qalamoun Mountains on the Syrian-Lebanese border is a signal strategic breakthrough for Bashar Assad’s army, climaxing a row of battleground successes that have cast the rebel forces in deep disarray. Nabuk fell after a two-week siege by the combined forces of Syria, Hizballah, Iraqi Shiite units and the Iranian Al Qods Brigades. The Qalamoun range which separates central Syria from central Lebanon is at their mercy.

Assad and his allies, Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, can chalk up four major war gains:

1. The highway from Damascus to Syria’s two port towns, Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean coast, is now open through the wayside town of Homs.
2.  The last remaining rebel supply routes from Lebanon are cut off. Syrian rebels can no longer use Lebanon as a supply base for reinforcements and new recruits or as a destination for their casualties to receive treatment.
3. The Damascus-Beirut highway is now wholely under Hizballah control, providing its Beirut headquarters vitally direct access to the forces posted to Damascus, and easing liaison and communications among Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah military units in the field.
4.  Pushing the rebels out of their Qalamoun strongholds was the last step before loosening their two-year grip on the eastern suburbs of Damascus. Under relentless Syrian army siege, many rebel commanders holding on to those suburbs are crossing the lines and handing sectors over to Syrian army officers.

The Assad regime has reached a stage in the civil war at which the rebels no longer pose a military threat to his hold on power and have lost the capacity for more more than terrorist attacks or sporadic mortar shelling.

The Syrian rebel movement has lost its coherence as a fighting force. In desperation, they are releasing a stream of false claims of successes and unfounded accusations that Assad has reverted to chemical warfare.

debkafile’s sources have also established that there is no truth in rebel assertions that they had written guarantees from the United States and European governments that Bashar Assad would not remain in power after the Geneva II to be convened next month for a political solution of the Syrian conflict.

Since the only anti-Assad forces still in fighting shape are the two Al Qaeda affiliates, Jabhat al Nusra and the Iraqi branch, Washington is turning its back on the Syrian rebel movement as a whole and instead ready to talk indrectly to Syrian army elements loyal to Assad as well as Hizballah.

For the first time in the 1,000-day civil war, the Americans find themselves in greater sympathy with Russia, Iran, Assad and Hizballah than the rebel cause.

Indeed, in consideration of Hizballah’s military kudos and rising political clout in Beirut, the Obama administration has opened up a back channel to its leaders, mostly through British diplomats.

It turns out that the same coalition which contrived the nuclear deal in Geneva on Nov. 24 – the US, Russia and Iran – is going into action again on the Syrian issue with a favored spot for Iran’s Lebanese Shiite pawn
Hizballah is meanwhile paying dear for its battleground exploits as witnessed in the daily funerals of Hizballah commanders and fighters who died in the Syria war – the last was Ali Bazzi from the south Lebanese town of Bin Jbeil who was laid to rest on Monday, Dec. 9.
Nasrallah needs his gift of the gab more than ever before to answer constant complaints from his followers and demands to understand the rationale by which their best commanders had to lay down their lives for a foreign cause on an alien battlefield.

They don’t buy his argument that their intervention in the Syrian war defended Lebanon against its spillover.

They may change their tune when Lebanese Shiites, along with their Iranian masters, discover that the Syrian wheel has turned again and the United States and other big powers are distancing themselves from the rebel side of the war and beginning to favor Assad and his allies, namely Iran and Hizballah.

Ya’alon: Iran building terror infrastructure to strike US | The Times of Israel.
Defense minister warns of danger posed by Iran’s terror cells in Central and South America, and of the regime’s global aspirations

By Mitch Ginsburg December 9, 2013, 6:30 pm

Ya’alon, right, with Molina in Jerusalem on Monday (Photo credit: Ariel Hermoni/ Ministry of Defense)

Iran has built an infrastructure of terror in Central and South America in order to, among other goals, target Israelis and Jews there and have a base from which to attack the US, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Monday.

Ya’alon, meeting with Guatemalan President Otto Fernando Perez Molina, himself a former director of military intelligence, warned that Iran, which operates the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah as a proxy, was using diplomatic cover to spread terror in the Western Hemisphere.

“The Iranians use diplomatic mail [pouches] in order to transport bombs and weapons, and we know that there are states in South America, like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, where the Iranian have terror bases, both in the embassies and among the local Shiite Muslim populations,” Ya’alon said.

“They built this infrastructure for the eventuality that they will have to act against Jews, Israelis or Israeli interests, but it is important to them as an infrastructure that enables them to act within the United States,” he added.

Ya’alon cited a the recent foiling of an Iranian plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, and said the country was using drug smuggling routes to sneak weapons into the US.

The comments came amid a US détente with Iran that led, in November, to an interim deal that paused but did not disable the country’s nuclear program. The US and Israel disagree both on the terms of a permanent agreement and the nature and significance of Iran’s recent warming to the West.

Meeting with Molina earlier in the day, Netanyahu called for the international community to clamp down on Iran’s military and nuclear capabilities, reiterating a demand made the night before in an address to the Saban Forum in Washington.

“Here’s what this means: no enrichment, no centrifuges, no heavy water reactor, no weapons program, no ballistic missiles and a change in Iran’s policies — no genocide against Israel, no terrorist support, no undermining of regimes in the Middle East,” he said, according to a statement from his office.

Molina told Netanyahu that his country shared concerns over Iran’s nuclear program.

“It is a tradition for Guatemala, we have always been in favor of nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, both in Latin America as well as in the rest of the world, and we hope that this concern that we can see today, which is a great threat to the State of Israel, will find a resolution as soon as possible,” he said, according to the statement.

Ya’alon, who has been in lockstep with Netanyahu on Iran, said that the global terror infrastructure is indicative of the regime’s aspirations. The regime, he said, is willing to go to great lengths in order to spread the Islamic revolution around the world. In the Middle East, he said, Iran supports whoever seeks to harm Israel or the West.

“Their goal is regional and global hegemony, today through terror and subversiveness. That’s why they want a nuclear bomb, both in order to protect the regime and as a nuclear security policy that will allow them to accelerate their diplomatic subversiveness,” he said. “This is a threat to the stability of the world, and therefore we insist that one way or another it’s impermissible for them to get the bomb.”

Stuart WIner contributed to this report.

Iran knows there is ‘almost no’ chance of strike, ex-top adviser says | The Times of Israel.

Geneva deal delegitimized military action, says Netanyahu’s recently retired top security adviser; adding that Tehran is unbending in its aim to destroy Israel

By Raphael Ahren December 9, 2013, 7:44 pm

ATHENS –  The interim deal reached in Geneva last month between Iran and six world powers has drastically reduced the likelihood of military intervention to thwart the rogue Iranian nuclear program,  Israel’s former national security adviser said Monday.

A military strike has been “almost delegitimized” by the deal, and Tehran knows that the likelihood of military intervention now “is almost zero,” Yaakov Amidror said, addressing European Jewish leaders in the Greek capital.

Amidror also rejected US President Barack Obama’s suggestion Saturday that Iran, “like any country” could “change over time,” positing that the destruction of Israel is one of the Iranian regime’s key goals, for ideological and religious reasons, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

However, it is in Jerusalem’s interest to see the Iranian nuclear standoff resolved diplomatically, since Israel will be the country to feel the heat of retaliation if the Islamic Republic were attacked, he said. But the alacrity with which the US and five other world powers struck the interim deal with Iran weakened the position of the international community for the upcoming talks of a comprehensive settlement, Amidror warned.

Asked by The Times of Israel whether Israel might be reconciled to Iran retaining what Obama called “some modest enrichment capability” under stringent international supervision in a final agreement, Amidror would not be drawn. “The answer is that we will have to decide,” he said. “I’m not answering theoretical questions.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday told the Saban Forum that a permanent accord needed to ensure the complete “termination” of Iran’s military nuclear capacity. A day earlier, in remarks to the same forum, Obama said he could “envision an end state that gives us an assurance that even if they have some modest enrichment capability, it is so constrained and the inspections are so intrusive that they, as a practical matter, do not have breakout capacity.”

Amidror, a retired general who dealt mostly with military intelligence, headed the Israel National Security Council until last month.

Giving his assessment of the Iranian leadership’s attitude to Israel, he said: “It’s not a game. Those people really believe that Israel doesn’t not have the right and the legitimacy to be an independent state in the Middle East.”

Speaking to delegates of the European Jewish Congress, holding its annual executive meeting in the Greek capital, Amidror added: “It’s not only [rhetoric intended] for the Iranian population; it’s not for elections. They really believe Israel should not exist. And this is the source of all these problems. The belief of those people, who are leading now Iran, that Israel should not exist. Everything other than that is tactics.”

Israel is acutely alarmed by the Iranian threat precisely because it understands that this is the mindset of the regime, he went on. “The elimination of Israel is one of the great, important strategies of the Iranians, and this the main problem when we’re dealing with this issue. It is based on their religious belief and this is something that I don’t see changing in the years ahead.”

Amidror reiterated Jerusalem’s criticism of the interim deal with Iran, which partially freezes the nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief. For a start, he said, the agreement was bad because the P5+1 countries had shown that they wanted to sign it more than the Iranians did. “That’s a very important factor for the next stage of the negotiations: When you negotiate with someone you know is more eager to have an agreement than yourself, you’re in a better position during the negotiations.”

The deal also “almost delegitimized” a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Amidror posited. “So, everyone says ‘all options are on the table,’ but it is well understood in Tehran that the chance that the other options will be taken is almost zero.”

He added: If the Iranians see that the other side is more eager to have an agreement, and that the other [military] option practically does not exist, that means that the P5+1 lost the best leverage that they have against the Iranians, and they are coming to the next stage of the negotiations in a weaker position than in the first stage.”

Talks on a permanent accord are supposed to start when the interim deal takes effect, and to last six months. However, the interim deal has not yet taken effect because “technical issues” relating to its implementation are still being negotiated.

Amidror added: “I want to be very clear. It is the interest of the state of Israel [for the international community] to have a good agreement with the Iranians. A good agreement means an agreement in which it will be clear that the Iranians cannot [attain] nuclear capability. But this [interim] agreement does not even hint towards this direction.”

If anyone — even the US — attempted to attack Iran’s nuclear site, Israel “will be the only one that will have to deal with the real capability of the Iranians,” he said, referring to potential Iranian military retaliation.

The Iranians know it would be a mistake to act against US interests in the Persian Gulf or elsewhere, because they don’t have the military means to severely damage such targets, he said. “What they have is Hezbollah, which might be used — will be used — against Israel.”